After much pressure from my husband, I finally created life with him other than human. This is Bodie. He is our sourdough starter. Below, you can see he has just been fed. He will bubble and froth soon.

A ladle of this fermented beast mixed with flour, salt, duck fat and warm water will bring sourdough joy to serve with many things.

Zélie did the advanced dry pour, I added water. We stretched and kneaded for five minutes or so. After, we did some loaves.

It runs something like this:

A kilo of flour

25 g of salt

A big scoop of duck fat

600ml of water

A ladle of Bodie ( or your Bodie equivalent )

Mix it in and do the stretchy knead thing. Things will be sticky. This was a rye loaf so only needs one rising. From here, make your loaves. After a few hours, bake ’em. Let ’em cool. Stop calling them ’em and add a big butter pat. It’s fun to say, “butter pat.” More importantly a good butter pat will make you healthy.

Bodie has serverd us with two loaves of bread thus far. To honor his namesake I offer you this tribute. R.I.P. real Bodie, May 1946 – November 2013.

I’m trying my best to space out the pots of foie gras I have in the fridge. But I could no longer hold out. There are still a few pots left. I see a foie gras omelette in my future.

… And yes, that is a pair of special wire cutters in the background that are supposed to be used for your special bicycle “fixie” collection and instead we use them for fencing. It’s the Gascon way, use what you have and make what you don’t have.

It was a simple maneuver: Move a few things to let Gangnam Beef snug in for the evening. Everything moved accordingly until I grabbed a small bag of duck fat ( I do believe I’ve mentioned my surplus of duck fat ). It’s like it always had a “thing” for the lard. Like duck fat was not quite the tasteless animal fat that lard is and resents lard for this exact attribute. So in the only way it knew how, the small bag of duck fat grasped the shelf tightly as I tried to move it thus tipping the shelf and all its lardy contents right onto the cold, hard tile smashing all that contacted it. The biscuits, the crisp potatoes, the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving in one moment have become a dream that will never materialize. I’ll need to find a new charming pig with lovely white gold fat to set our table right. I’m unhappy with you, duck fat, so you will spend some time in the freezer until we both cool down.